Planet of Dust [AUDIO/2019.10.9]

★★★★☆

  Oh, now this is more like it. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say that every Dr. Who series should try to adhere to one specific style. Everything has a right to be whatever they want. The problem was that for three-fourths of its duration (that's three boxsets), Ravenous has been on a firm middle ground between being incredibly fun and actively being terrible, and it's failed to be truly "interesting" to me. I mean, I loved one or two of the past Ravenous entries, but it's not been the most appealing Eighth Doctor Big Finish series because of its sheer willingness to be okay.

  Planet of Dust is not that. We get a vivid world that's instantly arresting, we get a Master played by Geoffrey Beevers that's quite different from any portrayal of the Master we've gotten in the past -- a truly desperate and withered monster looking for death and a mysterious tomb of one of Gallifrey's legends, and we get the Eleven being the most fired up he's been since forever. Yep, I think we're back. It's a shame that at this point, I'm (this is terrible of me to say) beginning to be less and less enthused about this TARDIS trio. Paul McGann's post-Dark Eyes Eighth Doctor is not as half as interesting as he once was, and Liv and Helen have been milked to absolute death and back... and I don't think they were all that invested in the material themselves during the recording. I can hear the lack of enthusiasm from each and every one's voices, except for Beevers and Mark Bonnar. Hard pill to swallow, but it's what it is. What's great about Planet of Dust is that the script itself is so filling, so confident and enticing that it almost offsets all these problems I have. It's a very fun audio drama with plenty of good moments for its villains (can't say the same for the heroes).